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Kenyan First Lady Spends 4 Hours On Line To Vote

SaharaReporters visited Umoja One Ward at Umoja Primary school in Nairobi at 8:40 a.m. The line was so long with several tents set up for electoral staff as all classrooms were taken.

The wife of President Uhuru Kenyatta,  Margaret Kenyatta, spent over four hours on line before she was able to cast her vote at St. Mary School polling center in Lavington, Nairobi.

It was the same story for hundreds of thousands of Kenyans at polling stations across Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. SaharaReporters visited Umoja One Ward at Umoja Primary school in Nairobi at 8:40 a.m. The line was so long with several tents set up for electoral staff as all classrooms were taken. Voters sat patiently waiting to vote.

At Kariobangi South Primary school, voters also queued patiently, except for voters on line 2 where the voting machine malfunctioned. People on that line were agitated. They told SaharaReporters to inform the government that some of them have been on the line for over four hours.

It is the same story of long lines of voters at Dr. Nwenje High School. IEBC presiding officer in charge, Gerald Maina, told SaharaReporters that he was impressed by how things were going. Just like the voters, he agreed that IEBC had done a better job this time around in planning and executing the electoral process.

Meanwhile, the primary candidates in today's election, President Kenyatta of the ruling Jubilee Party and his main challenger, Raila Odinga of the opposition National Super Alliance, have voted and once again promised to accept the result of the elections.

Voters who spoke to SaharaReporters were glad to exercise their civic duty by voting. At Dandora primary school in Nairobi, a man who uses an oxygen tank joined the line too to vote. One voter, Violet Onyango told SaharaRepoters at Kariobangi South primary that the election was more than about her. "It is about the future of our children," she said.

Whether the future of the children of Kenya will be bright or not now depends on what happens at the tallying center. For now, Kenyans are cautiously optimistic.

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Elections Kenya